Bowl Fallout Lightly Dusts Daytona Beach

January 2, 1986|By Mike McKee of The Sentinel Staff

DAYTONA BEACH — Nearly everyone in the Daytona Beach area tourism business remembers the 1982 holiday invasion of the West Virginians.

Thousands of West Virginia University Mountaineers' fans packed the resort city and its beaches for about one week before the school's big game in Jacksonville's Gator Bowl against Florida State University.

''There must've been 20,000 people here from West Virginia,'' Al Szemborski, owner of the Daytona Inn-Broadway, recalled Tuesday.

The team had decided to stay in Daytona Beach and faithful fans followed. It was a weeklong party that ended on a sour note with the Mountaineers' 31 to 12 loss to FSU's Seminoles.

Ensuing Gator Bowls and Citrus Bowls have not brought as much prosperity to Daytona Beach. No fans have moved in en masse since the West Virginians.

Tourism officials would not mind a return trip by the Mountaineers, but this year they got the Brigham Young Cougars and the Ohio State Buckeyes in Orlando and FSU's Seminoles and the Oklahoma State Cowboys in Jacksonville.

None of those teams brought fans who stayed outside the two bowl cities this year. A few made day trips to the beach, notably Ohio State fans and a troop of Citrus Bowl parade marchers from Tennessee, but the financial impact on Daytona Beach was meager, tourism leaders said.

Szemborski said Florida State fans just drove home after their game. Brigham Young and Oklahoma State did not have that big a following, he said, noting that the Cowboys brought few fans in 1984 when they defeated South Carolina 21 to 14 in the Gator Bowl.

For Daytona Beach to bask in the fallout, Szemborski said, ''You got to get a team from Tennessee, Georgia, the Carolinas . . .''

Gary Brown, president of the Hotel/Motel Association of the Daytona Resort Area; Ruel Bradley, general manager of Daytona Oceans 11 Resorts, consisting of five large oceanfront motels; and Alex Bray, executive director of The Chamber, Daytona Beach/Halifax Area, said business was booming the week after Christmas, but not from bowl crowds.

Brown said the week after Christmas is a time when travelers stop in Daytona Beach but mainly to get away from the cold weather and rest after the holiday.

A few stop en route to Miami's Orange Bowl, a fact confirmed by the group of West Virginians who stayed at Szemborski's motel last weekend and planned to return after the Tennessee-Miami game on New Year's Day. Szemborski said all of them had stayed in Daytona Beach during 1982's Gator Bowl game.

Bray said business from the bowl games might have been better this year if weekend temperatures had not plunged into the 20s and 30s.

Even so, the people who came to Daytona Beach after the Citrus Bowl game had few complaints.

''When we left Cincinnati, it was 22 degrees below with the wind chill,'' said Rick Levine, 20, an Ohio State student visiting the beach Monday. He and a friend, Jerald Rosenston, 20, also of Ohio State, were part of a four-day package tour that included Daytona Beach, the Citrus Bowl game, Walt Disney World and Orlando's Church Street Station.

Melanie Cunningham, 17, Cheri Zweig, 16, and Sharon Waltz, 17, members of the Brentwood, Tenn., High School marching band that won honors in the Citrus Bowl parade, were part of a group of 151 on the beach Monday.

''We wanted to see if we could get a tan while it's freezing,'' said Zweig, who was wearing a light sweater. Instead, she said, the trio decided to go shopping.

That was fine with tourism officials who have seen brighter bowl years.